1998 is here: we’re temporarily disabling front page javascript

We've spent the last month troubleshooting some ephemeral site rendering problems... or trying, anyway. Today we hit the "omg, that's going to kind of suck" level on our list of possible problems, which means that you might notice some temporary differences when you're browsing the site for the next week or so.

Up first: a mostly javascript free frontpage. The only running scripts on the Ars Technica homepage will be ad code and Google Analytics. This means we won't have any spiffy filtering of frontpage stories, tab based filtering on the journal box, or a customize menu. Those elements will all work on other pages, just not the frontpage. Your customizations should also still apply (if you use the dark theme, for instance). The frontpage will remain this way throughout Tuesday, then switch back to the full featured goodness you've come to expect for Wednesday.

This article leaves me wondering why this can't be done on a testing server without affecting the live site?

Because that hasn't gotten us anywhere yet.

We have a couple of tracking pixels on the frontpage, one server side, one client side. The numbers on those aren't at all what they should be. If the sporadic rendering problem we've heard about *is* actually causing our problems, I would expect to see the numbers for those pixels change for the better today and tomorrow.

Hah, I should clarify that when I said "Load" above I didnt mean it was due to the vast traffic we get, rather that we need a full set of real client hitting this thing for a day to track down our issue.

PLEASE get rid of the javascript for the comment pages! By which I mean.. I want to go directly to the (much more fully featured) forum rather than the shitty AJAXy abomination that is it's alternative.

PLEASE get rid of the javascript for the comment pages! By which I mean.. I want to go directly to the (much more fully featured) forum rather than the shitty AJAXy abomination that is it's alternative.

We're working on that. It annoys clint and I as much as (or more than) it annoys you.

Really? All over? Because we only made a change to the frontpage itself. Even removing the js shouldn't perceptibly change the frontpage rendering speed.

Well, just the front page. But there's definitely a speed difference -- the page renders instantly now, whereas before it displayed tolerably quickly but with noticeable page drawing. This is on a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 here at work.

quote:

Originally posted by d_jedi:PLEASE get rid of the javascript for the comment pages! By which I mean.. I want to go directly to the (much more fully featured) forum rather than the shitty AJAXy abomination that is it's alternative.

I'm trying to get into the habit of middle-clicking the comment links to force the use of the forum.

Originally posted by d_jedi:PLEASE get rid of the javascript for the comment pages! By which I mean.. I want to go directly to the (much more fully featured) forum rather than the shitty AJAXy abomination that is it's alternative.

Ever since the redesign made the front page non-functional I just never go there anymore. It's much easier and more pleasant to browser through the forum "Ars Technica News & Discussion" and just click on the all the articles that look interesting. Then you always start on the right discussion page too (except when they double post it). I'm glad that the worthless new version is getting looked at for the benefit of new users though.

Ever since the redesign made the front page non-functional I just never go there anymore.

You know, it's really hard to take comments like this seriously so that we can potentially address issues. "non-functional"? Really?

*Shrug*. "Less-functional" might be more accurate, compared to the old version I find it much harder to actually find stories I want, the visual difference between full articles and Journal entries vanished, the overall look is much gaudier and less information-compact, RSS feeds are not unique (the same item will show up in multiple feeds), etc. There isn't really anything to say honestly Aurich because all this came up in the original and subsequent feedback threads, but it appears enough people like the change regardless and the majority rules. As I said, since I can just work around it with GreaseMonkey (rewrite the Ars page, for example eliminating the worthless shit discussion system and making all links going to the forum instead) or behavioral changes (browse from the forum directly) is it really something worth bothering you over? Despite ignoring areas I'd prefer to see worked on, like the forums themselves, the Ars community and such is still very valuable and enjoyable, and there are still numerous fantastic articles, so you still get my money and I don't plan to go anywhere regardless. You don't really have any motivation to worry about what an apparent minority would prefer in that case do you? It's just something to live with, that's how the world works.

As far as the discussion system goes, well I assume there isn't really any debate about much worse the "new" (previously restricted to journals) one is. You can't even access the minimal outdated functionality available in the forum. I think though that this only really bites people new to Ars since they might not know any better.